WRITTEN ON November 23rd, 2010 BY Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom GCMG KCVO AND STORED IN Uncategorized

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MY LORDS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN what a delight to see you all.

My name is Bonar Neville-Kingdom and it is my pleasure to welcome you all to the Institute for Government for the launch of our new ethnographic study into how government is adapting to the Internet age.

We cherish this Institute for Government not just for its wonderful setting and location, not just for its warm welcome and very palatable catering but above all for the innovative and challenging work it does pathfinding the future of government Information and Communication Technologies.

The Institute thoroughly merits its accolade this month of the Prospect Magazine “Think Tank of the Year” award. Well done Andrew and everyone.

The question of the impact of social networking on the Senior Civil Service is a profound one. It deserves to be explored in some depth. As you know the matters we deal with day to day in the Senior Civil Service could hardly be weightier. Yet contemporary technology allows a sort of lightness, a fleetness of foot, the ability to send our messages to everyone at the mere touch of a button, without inertia of any kind … which appears paradoxical.

We deal in issues which are diverse and global, yet we maintain a “hands on” approach. And what could be more “hands on”, than for one such as I simply to immerse myself, to become part of this world which we now call Government 2.0.

That was the essence of my role as Technology Outreach Czar. And this is the genesis of the exercise on which we now report back.

My every memorandum, my conversations, and even material I have typed myself has been transcribed and placed on the Twitter. Thus they are presented: raw, fresh, vital, and unexpurgated. In doing so I find I have effectively written a book: inadvertently as it were. This is now published today under the title “<em>The Twitters of Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom“.

To me the experience has been something like a year of dictation sent without sight. But I have no doubt it conveys something of profound importance about what we have already become accustomed to call Government 2.0 and will shortly, if our friends at Gartner are correct, soon find ourselves calling Government 3.0.

Since we are just amongst ourselves, let me say a few words first about the Government’s new secret ICT Strategy which, once successfully implemented, will place Britain at the forefront of global ICT use and make us the envy of the world.

The first part of our strategy is that Government ICTs will be cheaper, faster and greener. That’s what new computers are like nowadays, as those of you with staff or family who use or purchase computers will be aware. Why should this be any different when IBM, Atos Origin or Lockheed Martin buy them on our behalf?

Second, we shall commission a G-Cloud in which all the complexity of tackling the nation’s problems by running some of the largest databases in the world will be placed. As you know, companies like Face Book, Yahoo! and eBay already operate inside a cloud. No-one ever knows how much they spend on ICT or when things go wrong.

We see immense strategic advantages in developing such a cloud ourselves – a G-Cloud – and placing all government ICTs inside it. The tricky aspects of what we do will simply disappear, Microsoft assures me. It will save a great deal of money, and be 100% secure. Furthermore the scale of our investment, and the expertise we shall acquire in cloud operations will mean we will have extra capacity and skills we can sell back to the Amazons and Googles of this world.

Finally we will announce a Government Apps Store. I can reveal that we shall commission:

1. the Intercept Modernisation Programme
2. the Smart Metering Database and
3. the next stage of the DVLA’s online car tax disk system.

Let me say a brief word about each of these Apps and then conclude.

Intercept Modernisation merely restores in a digital age the ability Government has always had to read the addresses of people’s envelopes and to record which numbers they dial. In a digital world this also means recording the web sites people visit and the email addresses people use. This is merely common sense. We shall ensure the programme is both cost-effective and too big to fail.

The Smart Metering Database is simply a record of who uses how much electricity when. This will help with intelligent, “greener” power supply management. We will also be able to to see who uses what sort of electronic device at precisely what time of day. By linking this to our Rapiscan body imagery our trained operatives, all duly CRB-checked, will be able to form a judgement on the propensity of subjects to take drugs, to share files, and to commit acts of Terror.

The DVLA car tax system has proved such a great success, attracting interest from all around the globe and satisfaction ratings of well over 100%, that we have decided to sanction the next £60m stage payment to IBM to allow usage to go over the 50% threshold. This will require the installation of some new servers which will, of course, be “cheaper, faster and greener”.

Ladies and Gentlemen I have detained you long enough. Let me say thank you to everyone at the Institute for Government. And on a personal note might I add what a welcome relief it is for a change to have an Institute that is *”for”* government when so many institutes, phoney foundations, not to mention most of the News Media, are quite clearly “against”.

Indeed I have spent much of the afternoon, and will continue tomorrow morning going through the Cabinet Office Christmas Card Blacklist. I regret to have to report there are now so many self-appointed do-gooders and carping naysayers that the Blacklist is now this year for the first time longer than the white-list itself.

But here at the Institute For Government one feels very much at home. It is, to conclude, just the sort of place that a senior and highly respected Cabinet Office official like myself might wish to spend some time after retirement, reflecting on Innovation and passing on the many lessons learned in the course of a long and varied career to a future generation, if I might say so Andrew.

So Ladies and Gentlemen there are refreshments: eat up; drink up; buy the book in copious quantities, and please take time to reflect on its inner meaning.

Place your reviews and reactions on the Web Site of our outsourced publishing partner Lulu.com.

I’d like to thank Patricia and all the staff who worked on this. And it only remains for me to repeat the words of the near-divine poet Hafez:

[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by PublicSectorBloggers, Jim Webster. Jim Webster said: Speech at the Institute for Government on the occasion of the book launch for “The Twitters of Sir Bonar Neville… http://bit.ly/g0ki43 […]

Mavis wrote on November 24th, 2010 8:56 am :

Millicent – you remember Chandos was at SOAS with Percival – and i were distressed when we heard a Young Person, one J Nixie-Splosm, I think he was, refer to you as “that rogue Sir Bonar”. Britain needs People Like Us. I believe some of the young do not even read THE TIMES, a sad reflection on the state of the country today. I was delighted you have been asked to write for it, Thank you for telling me. All best wishes, Mavis

[…] • The launch last night of a magisterial new “ethnographic study” of government in the age of the internet, by government’s data sharing tsar Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom. In his speech at the Institute for Government, Sir Bonar revealed details of the government’s new Intercept Modernisation Programme app: […]

William Heath wrote on November 24th, 2010 7:38 pm :

Guardian Society describes:

The launch last night of a magisterial new “ethnographic study” of government in the age of the internet, by government’s data sharing tsar Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom. In his speech at the Institute for Government, Sir Bonar revealed details of the government’s new Intercept Modernisation Programme app:

“Intercept Modernisation merely restores in a digital age the ability Government has always had to read the addresses of people’s envelopes and to record which numbers they dial. In a digital world this also means recording the web sites people visit and the email addresses people use. This is merely common sense. We shall ensure the programme is both cost-effective and too big to fail.”

[…] Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom, a man who appears to have the order of his name rather mixed up, gave a speech at the Institute for Government on Tuesday evening in which he described a new ‘ethnographic study into how government is […]

[…] Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom, a man who appears to have the order of his name rather mixed up, gave a speech at the Institute for Government on Tuesday evening in which he described a new ‘ethnographic study into how government is […]

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